ADADA STATE CREATION: LINGERING AND GRADUALLY FADING INTO A MEMORY

By Osy Ugwu

This article was first published in Shepherd newspaper November 2013 Edition

One arm of the National Assembly on Wednesday 16th March 1983 moved a motion in its order paper calling for the creation of Adada State after it was adjured to have met the criteria to be christened a state.  Thirty years later, we are yet to be a state and the possibility of becoming that seems to be a wishful thought. As for meeting up with the constitutional requirement, we have.  What made the senate recently to find all the 61 groups agitating for state, including our beloved Adada, which not only have met the constitutional provisions but remained the most consistent and the oldest agitation, is yet to be fully explained.

If my memory serves me right, it had been stories of how close we came to our dream, how we have garnered supports and how this and how that. A full basket of sickening how.  Frankly, I use to delight in such stories and occasionally I would take hold of eraser and rub it gently over Enugu State in the space provided for my state of origin on my documents and a few times wrote Adada State after Abia State on the list of states of Nigeria but the story yet deepens and looks like an endless fairy tale full of combatant men pursuing a white elephant with peerless vigour but armed with nothing other than courage.

There is a truth I have come to know and accept which my SS1 government teacher eloquently denied and forced us like the animals in George Orwell’s fable, The Animal Farm to believe that all animals are equal. The truth is that there are people and people and people. The first set of people are the hoi polloi; the second set are the influential souls who can cause the people at the helm of any affair to change a cause to their favour; and the last set are the people who decide what happens, where, when and how. The last set’s personal decisions have direct bearing on the fate of a nation. Like the saying goes, if they sneeze, the whole nation catches cold. It takes the people in the two last sets to win a cause like this in a nation like ours and may be this is a fact we have glossed over.  Truly, we have fought for this for a very long time and we remained the most consistent and the oldest agitation, but things like this are not gotten through sentiments. Do you think the Niger-Delta millitants got their amnesty because this nation thinks their agitation was just or that they have cried for so long? Remember the agitation they put was not even as weighty as the one Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni compatriots launched. Nsukka has these elements and may be until they decide to join the crew we may just be engaging in a nugatory business. It matters not whose signature is there or missing. If signature is all we need now, I have a good one and I did gladly give it. If it requires going to the house, I will board a cab and get to the house, sit inside it and give it. We are forgetting something. Some house members are as important as hoi polloi. Even amongst thieves there are honour, that is to say, some thieves are without honour and therefore cannot boast of tangible contribution to their polity. May be I am wrong!

Major General Ugwuoke has submitted the right documents with the right signatories to the right place and the wrong thing happened.  “What is wrong?” He did ask but the usual “I’ll look into it” was the response. We will wait. I will wait. We have no choice. We must. But for how long?-May be ad infinitum. But we have people in the house who would have asked “Didn’t you see my signature?” Perhaps the answer would have been ridiculous. This is yet another story. Major-General Ugwuoke (retd) has waited and he with HRH (Professor) Igwe Ukpabi and Honourable James Ugwu and members of the Enugu State Committee on the Actualisation of Adada State and Adada State Movement according to Nigerian Tribune Tuesday 10^th September 2013 have in 35 paragraph affidavit deposed to averred that all the necessary procedure for the creation of state have been fulfilled by the group and yet the proposal has not been considered. The source stated too that the matter is yet to be assigned to any judge. I know somebody can cause NAS to go to where they hid the updated document and give INEC the supposed signal to conduct the referendum and when it is time for the NAS to create new states it will be easy for us to grab the yam that has been making us to lose sleep and then go to bed.

What is the problem this time around apart from the usual it did not meet up with the constitutional requirement? At any rate what Emmanuel Uzodinma  reported in Daily Post on July 7, 2013 is suggestive.  He quoted the statement of Chief Nnanwike Nwodo for Adada State Movement, which was entitled “Nsukka people put the records straight”. According to the newspaper report, Nnanwike Nwodo said in the statement “It has become obvious that some enemies of the struggle have resorted to the below-the-belt tactics to scuttle the agitation. These detractors perhaps have interest in another state agitation in South East which unfortunately could not meet constitutional requirements unlike the request for Adada State. But I think Chief James Ugwu the spokesperson for the Adada State Movement and Enugu State Committee on Actualization of Adada State thinks otherwise. May the excerpts of his interview with Starlite Newspaper on August 15, 2013 will suffice.

Question: Let us look at it this way, do you not suspect any sabotage against your proposed Adada when you consider the very fact that the chairman of the senate committee on review of the constitution, Chief Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy speaker of the house of representatives, Hon Ihedioha and the consultant led by one Amucheazi are proponents of another state to be created in the south east instead of Adada state. Do you not think that their personnel interests could cause the damage?
Answer: No, no, no! I don’t think anything like that could be imagined by these gentle men. See, they are on national assignment and therefore could not have brought their personal interests to bear.

As far as we are concerned, we requested for the creation of Adada state and as I speak with you, we have met all the constitutional requirements and the law says, ‘once you fulfill these requirements the national Assembly should order INEC to conduct a referendum and that is what we are asking for.

I do know we know the problem but to tackle it is what we are yet to do. I always hear words like lobby from the lips of politicians. If our stick and carrot method is not working let’s try lobbying method. I don’t have the practical knowledge of this but I think I have read a lot of problems on the dailies it did solve. If we are tired of trying, let us then  focus on 2015 election.

NSUKKA: A MILE TO THE DREAM CITY

                                              By Osy Ugwu

This article was first published in shepherd newspapaper 0ctober 2013

A close look at this town that births a greater chunk of human capital in Nigeria reveals a town well-planned and perhaps laid on a solid foundation. To be fair, it is organized a kind of, therefore it is supposed to be taken lesson from and not the other way round. By a priori conjecture, it has seen good governance in the recent times. This is evident in the way the master plan of this city has been executed, at least to a laudable extent.  

Without meaning to dive into recounting of the achievements of the past administrations, I must note with some pride that the short but intense romance this town had with Hon.Onyema Idoko and the one it still having with the successor, Barr. Tony Ugwu has culminated into myriads of development. These two men have successfully decongested the Ogige Market, giving rise to Ikpa Commodity Market, Ultra-modern Park under construction at Aku Road and Building Materials’ Market adjacent to the Industrial site. There are others such as the new abattoir to reduce health risk to the traders and rebuilding of the market stalls into standard and better stalls to curtail fire hazards. The old Park has been German-floored and too many other good things time and space wouldn’t permit me to recall here. Especially space. I won’t forget some of them like the floor of Private Park and some ‘green-painted sticks with 60watt bulb atop’ christened solar streetlight that were done by some people to save face. Anyway, those selling akara and roasting oka are enjoying them in the evenings. No thanks to them for thinking us unfit to have better streetlights.

Irrespective of the aforementioned achievements, we still have a mile to arrive at our destination. Yes, for a couple of reasons. I must note that what makes a city is not the quantity of infrastructures but the quality of minds of the inhabitants for which such infrastructures are meant for. And this quality of mind is instilled into the inhabitants through government apparatus which itself must have been disciplined. Such must include the Taskforce, Police, Civil Defense, etc. Especially Taskforce as it concerns a locality. The Nsukka taskforce have demonstrated to all and sundry that they are ‘touts’ as people use to tag them. These people are seriously entangled in sheer incivility, brandishing power with ignorance. This is where our beloved city fails.Their  I have witnessed many a structure die unused. This is because people whose job it is to direct others take lessons from Onitsha touts and forget that here is Hill city, the home of the academics and things here are supposed to be done in the proper decorum. Most agonizing is that most of them do not show concern on the area of their job description that does not put them in the position of gratifying themselves.

In a few years to come, the pedestrian bridge at the Ogige Market will clock 10 years and without been used. I have not seen them beat or harass anybody who crossed the road without using the pedestrian bridge. Is it not their work to direct the people to use them until they became accustomed to it? At any rate, it is still useful: those selling fruits and news-paper there keep their tables there.

 I must commend the Civil Defense Corps. Without them the pedestrian bridge in front of Catholic Cathedral will suffer the same fate as the one at the Old Park.

Believe you me, this mile can be short or long depending on our docility to values.

I could remember in those days when sanitary officers, may be, equivalent to today’s ESWAMA officials come around our sub-urban home here in Nsukka to check the health of our compounds especially toilet but today you see house with its sewer terminating at the main road and yet nobody asks questions about them. Today, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Eswama ignore wastes in the cans the government provided for the populace to dispose wastes and shift to charging and collecting irrelevant fees. They even do radio ads for the masses to pay their Eswama fee while wastes are dumped everywhere and unattended to. Whenever it occurs to them to pack the refuse at the Old Park, they will do it at rush hour, causing traffic congestion. The structure of their administration is poor: energetic youths go about collecting fees while old men strength has taken leave of do the ‘jaki’ work. The other day, I sighted two stern-looking local government officials approach my landlord with papers in their hands. I shouted almost immediately “that serves him right”. I thought they came to fine my landlord for allowing our compound turn swampy and eventually green. But I was wrong. They posted a court-injunction inviting us to court for owing house rate. But I cannot recall vividly the amount. Anyway, that is another story for another day.